Holiday season a time to share

In just four short weeks we will be sitting down to share another Christmas dinner. My spouse and I have had Christmas mostly in our own home over the years; but as a military brat, our family usually traveled for the holidays.

In just four short weeks we will be sitting down to share another Christmas dinner. My spouse and I have had Christmas mostly in our own home over the years; but as a military brat, our family usually traveled for the holidays.

We usually went to my mother’s parents’ house, which wasn’t over the river and through the woods. Instead, it meant a pallet in the back of an old Rambler station wagon and leaving at 2 in the morning, my father wired by gallons of hot, black coffee. It wouldn’t have been so awful if Dad hadn’t possessed an iron bladder. He could drink more coffee than anyone I’ve ever known without so much as a single pit stop. Mom and my sister and I were different: One eight-ounce drink of anything meant at least three trips to the bathroom. Dad didn’t like to stop the forward momentum once we got rolling, so bathroom breaks were at a premium.

Dinner was always the high point of Christmas Day, even though Grandma wasn’t much of a cook. She did have two dishes she made each Christmas that were really good, though: Ambrosia and something she called “Paradise Pudding.” The ambrosia was mostly just fruit with a liberal amount of coconut in it, but the pudding was a bit more mysterious. After Grandma died, Mom wrote down her pudding recipe — I still have it — and it contained, among other things, lemon pudding, cherry juice and macaroons. The absence of animal products other than milk made it a much safer bet than most of Grandma’s dishes. Her cooking was legendary for all of the wrong reasons.

Now, years later, I have my own specialties I make for the holidays. One of these is called Heavenly Cherry Pie Bread. It’s moist and delicious and freezes well, and, in the spirit of the holidays, I’d like to share it with you. Here’s what you do:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees and beat together in a large mixing bowl:

1˝ cups of oil

3 eggs

1 tsp vanilla extract

Sift into this mixture the following:

3 cups flour

2 cups sugar

1 tsp baking soda

1 tsp salt

1 tsp cinnamon

Stir in:

One 20-ounce can of cherry pie filling

1˝ cups of chopped pecans

Pour into two greased and floured loaf pans (I generally use Teflon pans and Pam instead) and bake for about 50 minutes to one hour. Keep an eye on it so it doesn’t burn. Cool on a wire wrack for a few minutes before unmolding.